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WASHINGTON — Eight Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states asked the Environmental Protection
Agency yesterday to make “upwind” Midwestern and Southern states — including Ohio — curb
ozone-forming pollution from power plants, contending that it poses health risks to their
citizens.

They want the EPA to force nine states — Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia — to regulate the emissions that cross into the
eight “downwind” states because of prevailing winds and contribute to higher ozone levels
there.

The move comes just ahead of a closely watched Supreme Court review of an earlier appeals-court
rejection of the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

The governors, led by Delaware’s Jack Markell, said the upwind states have failed for decades to
install the technology needed to contain emissions of organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, which
cause asthma and other respiratory diseases and contribute to as much as 98 percent of the ozone
air-pollution problems in the downwind states.

The petition asks the EPA to require the upwind states to join them in an “Ozone Transport
Region.” Under the federal Clean Air Act, that would force actions to limit air pollution
consistent with the efforts of the “downwind” states. Under that kind of pact, the Midwestern
states would need to install what are known as best-available control technologies to capture the
emissions.

Besides Delaware, the states petitioning for the controls are Connecticut, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Markell said downwind states pay the price for other states’ failure to install necessary
controls.

In a case being closely monitored by environmentalists and energy companies, the Supreme Court
will consider today the EPA rule that would have set limits on pollution from coal-fired power
plants in 28 states, generally referred to as “upwind states,” that directly affect air quality in
other states,

An alliance of industry groups and 15 states, in addition to energy companies such as
Columbus-based American Electric Power Inc., challenged the rule, which as a result has not been
implemented.